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| Limbic Signal's Terpene Lexical Network. |
Just kidding about the antioxidants thing. I’m really
into the words we use for smells, and words in general. So I’ve definitely
noticed the word Terpene come on the scene. It’s the magic word in the cannabis
industry right now. Terpenes are ultimately the plant-secreted oils that give
the flower its aroma. In other words, they are the smell of pot, both the good
and the bad smells.
Terpenes are already an important part of the olfactory
world, as they are the primary
means of communication among plants, bacteria, and insects. And you can
probably call the essential oils of plants something else, but terpenes sounds
pretty cool, so that’s it.
For all its popularity, there have been few attempts to
quantify directly the olfactory profiles of the cannabis industry. I’m talking
about using legit hi-tech smell-sniffing machines; nobody had done this yet. We
hear about ‘skunk’ and ‘citrus,’ but we haven’t tested a group of words for its
usefulness in describing cannabis in all its olfactory instantiations. (There’s
a pretty good reason for this, i.e., Federal law; see below.)*
He Smells an
Opportunity
Sensory scientist Avery
Gilbert was quick to notice this Lingua
Vacuum, and quick to provide the solution. First he created a company that
will now be known as the promulgator of the cannabis odor vocab – Headspace Sensory. He then wrote
himself a study, got approval for testing, scored some product off the
recreational market in Colorado, along with some equipment, a labspace and some
volunteers, and here we are with a rigorously tested lexicon – 48 words that
can satisfy most descriptions of most of the cannabis on the market today.
There were some great results from his work, especially
regarding false associations between odor description and expected potency.
I’ll go into that shortly, but first I should describe how he did all this. Because
you know, details matter.
The cannabis product itself was chosen to represent a
comprehensive sample of what’s out there (Lemon Diesel, OG Kush, Snoop OG, etc.).
As for the words to use for describing the aromas of these different products,
he did what any serious, academically-based person would do – he went to
Leafly, and took a bunch of their olfactory-descriptors (earthy, musty, spicy,
fruity, etc.). I also did this when I made my terpene chart, check
it out here. The list he generates is deliberately over-inclusive, which
means there may be redundancies as well as unlikely terms. This is a move I
totally support, as olfactory identity has a lot to do with the margins and the
seemingly extraneous.
The next step was to mechanically “sniff” the products,
producing an analysis of the physical chemicals evaporating from them
(Limonene, Myrcene, etc.). And finally, he asked real humans to sniff those
same products, and choose from the list of potential descriptors enough words
to satisfy a worthy olfactory articulation.
On To the Results
The overall purpose here was to survey the limits of an
olfactory lexicon for cannabis. How many words do we really need to accurately
describe all the cannabis that’s on the market? Avery concludes with 48 words,
clustered into two major groups of 1) citrus,
lemon, sweet, and pungent and 2) earthy,
herbal, and woody in the other. For reference, similar lexicons for coffee
and wine cover about 85 words.
Here’s the total list; I also typed it out below:
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| Headspace’s Terpene Lexicon |
Time for the interesting part. Exactly as you would
expect (had you read my
book that is), smells have confused us. In Gilbert’s study, pot samples in
the Citrus group (citrus, lemon, sweet,
and pungent) were expected to be more
potent than those in the Earthy group (earthy,
herbal, and woody). Coincidentally, my terpene chart seen above does the
same thing, clustering the same descriptors in the middle because they are the
most common among all the terpenes. For whatever reason, people associate that
citrusy-sweet-sour aroma with THC. For the record, THC does not smell. I am
curious as to what others think about the reason for this, although I am sure
it’s complicated (and has nothing to do with the fact that the citrusy-pungent
profile made its appearance on the scene in tandem with higher potencies?).
Anyone who’s been reading High Times
since the early 90’s, feel free to weigh in!
Deeper into the olfactory funky skunk lexicon, Gilbert
found that “bad” smells were associated with “good” stuff, and vice versa. In
other words, the skunky, pungent, sour diesel, etc. flavors shouted DANK! while
others whispered weakly, “you just got beat,” which also translates as “backyard
boogie.”
This is great and I could talk about it forever, as it
takes us to one of the most important things to know about our sense of smell –
it is totally hedonically neutral, and totally malleable. Parmesan cheese is supposed to be gross to us, because it
is rotting animal proteins. Kimchi is rotting cabbage. But some humans have
been trained by their culture to like
Parmesan cheese and kimchi AND the bad-smelling parts of the cannabis plant.
That’s how smells work. There are no good or bad smells, only a code written by
our culture over time.
Transgressing
Cultural Limits
There’s something special about liking something you’re
not supposed to. It becomes part of your identity. Most Americans like Parmesan
cheese as a result of the Italian-American axis of culinary identity that is
the pasta dinner, so it’s not the best example to use here. But kimchi has seen
a sharp rise in popularity since it was “discovered” a handful of years ago on
a taco truck somewhere on the West Coast of the United States. And now, people
who like the smell of it have some kind of cultural advantage over others.
Twenty years ago, it would have been a reason to spit ethnic vulgarities (and
they smell so bad like rotten cabbage!), but today it does the same thing, only
in the other direction (what a loser, I guess he can’t handle the smell of
rotten cabbage in his tacos!).
If this is a topic
you’re interested in, check out the essay “Quantum Hedonics” in my book which you can find on Google books for free.
If you recall, there was a time in your life that alcohol
tasted like poison (alcohol is also fermented btw). Even sex has smells that at
one time were pretty offensive to your younger self. But as we mature, the “acquired”
taste for these things becomes a badge we wear as proof of our journey into
adulthood and independence. The smell of cannabis is no different. To come to
appreciate these “negative” properties of a thing is a cultural transgression that
works in perfect concert with the illegal/taboo nature of consuming drugs, as
well as the liberating effects of consciousness-expanding substances.
Perhaps it is the last two parts of the package that
drive such a strong preference for the “bad” smells of pot products. Gilbert,
in his report, makes it a point to mention that coffee and wine do not present skunky smells in a positive
light – they are instead seen as a defect in these products. Beer however,
which does not have its own aroma wheel like wine or coffee, suffers from being
skunked just the same. And yet, as IPA’s have dominated the craft market, it
should make you wonder whether the skunky-hops flavor of those beers are
another example of consumer desires to transgress olfactive-cultural boundaries.
Concluding
Thoughts
Thanks to Gilbert we now have a proper list of words to
describe these products. It allows us all to be on the same page, and it
furthers the growth in this budding industry by educating producers and consumers
alike, and by providing a consistent basis for comparison among different products.
More importantly, as far as I’m concerned, it gives us a baseline of data (a
bunch of words) that we can use to make further discoveries about our own
quirks, misunderstandings and cognitive-perceptual fallibilities.
*The primary reason
for this lack of research is that cannabis is still deemed illegal by the same
entity that grants the right to conduct experiments on humans. In other words,
in order to do any experiment that involves humans, one must secure approval,
basically proving that their experiment won’t hurt the people involved. But that
entity could never allow an experiment where illegal products are used. This is
the state law/federal law puzzle that keeps things interesting here in the US.
POST SCRIPT
Avery Gilbert’s Source
Article:
Gilbert AN, DiVerdi JA (2018) Consumer perceptions of
strain differences in Cannabis aroma. PLoS ONE 13(2): e0192247. https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0192247
Avery Gilbert ‘s Blog:
Terpene Network
Graph:
I made this
terpene graph where I took all the top terps from Leafly, and their
corresponding descriptors from the Sigma Aldrich catalog, and made an
interactive chart out of it (interestingly, my list has 49 words).
More Terpene Experts:
Oren Cohen is an olfaction artist and the founder and CEO
of Terpene Experts. He is an olfaction artist and educator who specializes in
terpene profile development, as well as providing professional flavor and
fragrance creator for a decade, with deep experience in cannabis, e-liquid, and
the restaurant industry.
Here’s What They Do:
We are terpene profile artists who can replicate the
exact nuances of any strain in world. Our expert noses can smell a bud and
detect the nuanced notes of its terpene profile with accuracy that comes from
years of work as flavorists and fragrance creators. This is an art and skill
that no lab report can replace. AND they create new terpene spectrumsss.
And Why They Do
It:
“When people use cartridges or pens, the entire
experience and expectation is different than that of flower. They want to enjoy
the flavor. They want the key profiles of their favorite strains to present
themselves in a layered and cohesive fashion. It’s our job as expert terpene
flavorists to deliver an experience that’s both familiar and compellingly
unique to the delivery system.”
Learn More About
Terpenes:
An Introduction to Terpenes: A four-week course
with Oren Cohen to explore the origins, profiles and uses of terpenes at the Institute
for Art and Olfaction in Los Angeles.
Leafly terpene
article:
POST POST SCRIPT
From Avery Gilbert’s Study: The 48
odor descriptors used to characterize cannabis samples:
ammonia
apple
apricot
berry
blue cheese
blueberry
butter
cheese
chemical
chestnut
citrus
coffee
diesel
earthy
flowery
grape
grapefruit
herbal
honey
lavender
lemon
lime
mango
menthol
mint
nutty
orange
peach
pear
pepper
pine
pineapple
plum
pungent
rose
sage
skunk
spicy
strawberry
sweet
tar
tea
tobacco
tree fruit
tropical fruit
vanilla
violet
woody
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